


Gardener, Gravedigger

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [8]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Angst, Beast Wirt, Blood, Death, Edelwood everywhere, Other, Prince!Wirt AU, Transformation, Violence, even little kids are dying, this is supposed to be a downer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-22 11:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21301154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: He has hit the point of no return.  There was never a choice.  That was a lie.
Series: Prince of the Unknown [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 28
Kudos: 199





	1. 🙞Gifts🙜

**Author's Note:**

> Last one until we're back in the present. Warning for mentions of death and bloody descriptions.

After Wirt finishes retching the nonexistent contents of his stomach into a bush, he has one thought: _what a waste of a deer._

The animal in question—the reason Wirt is still wrestling his gag reflex and having a hard time standing straight up—has been thoroughly skinned, all raw red meat and white marbled fat. Its hind limbs are strung up so that its spine falls against the oak’s trunk and its abdomen—which has been slit open to spill its glistening, congealing guts—faces toward Wirt. The severed skinned head grins up at him from the ground. Its antlers frame the mutilated body above. When Wirt shambles closer, a few crows rattle apologetically from the oak’s higher boughs. They took the deer’s eyes without asking The Caretaker first… but they made sure _no other creatures_ touched the offering.

Wirt reassures the crows that the wolves lurking just out of sight behind him are _not_ what distresses him. 

Winter prevents the carcass’s slow decay from polluting the air but Wirt cannot choose between breathing through his nose or through his mouth. Does he want to _smell_ the reek of fear that ruled the deer’s last moments? The fear of the people who slaughtered it in The Beast’s name? The cloy of coagulated blood? Or would he rather _taste_ it? 

Wirt wonders if the first Beast gave instructions on how he preferred animal sacrifices to be presented—or if he didn’t care, so long as enough suffering poured off the offering.

“I don’t… want it.” He yanks the words from the bottom of his stomach where they’ve tangled around a knot of hunger. His mouth waters and his stomach flips simultaneously and the dichotomy of his reaction jams his head with a migraine. _All that blood, melting the snow and soaking the soil._ “This is sick. It isn’t natural. No living thing should have to be stripped bare of skin and dignity, left to the elements for an undeserving eye…”

His throat squeezes shut. With a wave of his hand the wolves dart eagerly forward, grey fur brushing by The Caretaker in their haste to snap up a free meal that will save their pack. Slavering jaws and teeth shredding tendons soothes Wirt’s hunger-knot; _this_ is right, he thinks. Natural. 

It’d be nice if the mangled stag were the last of such macabre “presents.” But that would be asking too much.

Wirt unwillingly learns to identify the signs when someone offers The Beast a blood sacrifice. It is a unique variant of stimulation that stands apart from the constant primal hum of the forest and the yearning draw of the Lantern. The closest thing he can compare it to is what the Edelwood triggers in him: a nauseating mixture of _want_ and _grief._

Sacrifices are an invitation for The Beast’s presence. They’re meant to lure him, feed his power, and request his blessing. He can stomach the modest offerings of food or polished animal bones that a handful of people—regular, unassuming farmers and homesteaders—leave for him on tiny stone shrines or hidden in the crook of a tree; these little gifts are glazed with apprehension and a healthy layer of awe that discomforts Wirt when he finds them, but does not downright make his skin crawl. These contributions he accepts with the same mild embarrassment that plagued him whenever relatives bought him ugly sweaters for Christmas; more piles of edible winter plants are his thank-you note. 

Then there are the sacrifices that the witches make. These range from hares turned inside-out in a circle of red berries to skinned deer like the first one Wirt found, usually with symbols carved into bark or painted with ink and offal in the snow. They make Wirt choke if he fails to keep his distance. He sends the predators and scavengers to clean up the mess and refuses watch, because he’s not sure he can stop himself from joining their feeding frenzy. 

The Beast does not know what to leave in response to the ugly, maimed things. Perhaps the witches have already gotten what they needed from him or his predecessor long ago, and they’re still repaying their debt. He lives in fear of the day he crosses a human sacrifice.

(Another human sacrifice).

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Wirt is trekking along the crest of a hill overlooking a small valley when a rare, powerful tug snares his attention. He pauses, diaphragm lurching. It is not often that a pulse overtakes his hunger for the Lantern; not even the invitational banner of a sacrifice distracts him this much. He trails downward, in the direction of a village cupped within the valley’s moonwashed slopes.

The fledgling Beast has prowled the outskirts of several towns since the crowded grandiosity of Duchurch. He remembers searching for help with Greg in the fall, but doesn’t recall this modest place. The tug clamors more insistently as he nears all those smoking chimneys. 

He doesn’t have the courage to slither close enough for anyone to see him, however. Wirt watches tensely from behind broad trunks and tangled brambles. His hearing has grown so acute that he can pick up individual conversations happening from behind tavern walls as if his ear is pressed against a window (mostly griping about the weather, low stores of food… he stops listening at any mention of The Beast). He whiffs the breeze like a buck and tastes wool and woodsmoke, mouthwatering spices, and…

Dread. Dark and bitter as ash smeared on Wirt’s tongue. 

He changes direction. The heady bitterness threads its way from a cabin situated just outside the village. Its tiny windows glimmer with cataracts of frost. No light emanates from between the panes. No smoke from this chimney. Yet Wirt _knows_ a person is nearby, because their hopelessness thickens the arctic air like broth.

He follows the scent to an old man shivering wretchedly in the snow only yards from the cabin, crumpled into an arthritic knot, flesh blue from the cold. Wirt rears back, startled—then he’s crouching at the elder’s side, talons fluttering his body, unsure what to do, should he _touch_ him? Is it safe to move the stranger? Can he run for help in time to save him?

“What are you doing out here!?” Wirt’s voice trumpets in panic. When there’s no response he blunders through his unease to shake the old man’s shoulder. “H-hey! You’re freezing, you n-need to get inside…”

The woods murmur. Beneath a paltry dusting of snow, Wirt glimpses murky roots curling over the stranger’s wrists and ankles.

_Mine,_ thinks the forest. Thinks Wirt. His grip on the old man loosens, palm resting on a jutting shoulder blade as if to calm his victim’s terrible quaking. The roots stretch longer…

Phlegmy coughs jerk from the stranger’s chest. He finally cracks open his half-frozen eyes to peer up at the antlered boy next to him. 

“Beast?” he asks hoarsely. “Took you long enough.”

Surprise—and then hot shame—make Wirt withdraw his hand. He cradles his claws to his breastbone, worried that if he touches the elder again the Edelwood will crush him like the coils of a python. 

“I’m n-not—I’m different than—” Spasmodic denials. _Lord Beast? Is that you?_ He wonders if he should give the man his name. _Young buck._ Since it takes him more than five seconds to _remember_ his name, he decides against it. Besides, who cares? This poor person is freezing to death at Wirt’s feet and it’s more important to _help_ him. “You’re staying at the cabin, right? Let me take you back in. I can… well, I don’t know how to light a fire, but I can figure it out. I think. M-maybe you can walk me through it after we cover you in some blankets…”

The elder’s eyes are drifting shut. He’s actually relaxing into the snow, as if this isn’t an emergency. Wirt senses the exact feeble heartbeat in which the dread festering in the stranger fades into dull acceptance. 

“Didn’t think you’d… be so young…” Roots wrapping tighter. “I’m glad… I wasn’t alone… in the end…”

“Let me help you, please,” Wirt begs. His talons rake at the Edelwood, but it’s too late. The old man has given himself to the forest—and the Unknown devours the morbid gift, greedy stripes of wood overtaking flesh that Wirt cannot stop anymore than he can stop his antlers from growing or the moon from rising. There is no reverse. 

So instead of fighting the inevitable—or losing himself to the horrified wails swooping up from his stomach—Wirt guides the process forward. He trades tearing at the branches for directing them upward, his deft touch helping the trunk straighten and the boughs spread their weight evenly. The potency of the oil waiting beneath the bark thrums under his spiny fingertips. 

A melodic voice sings the fresh Edelwood into existence, every crystal note sewing its roots more firmly into the frigid soil. Wirt doesn’t realize that the song pours from his own vocal cords. His irises are ringed in dawn-blue and fire-yellow and rose-pink. He’s amputated himself from the abhorrence of his task. It isn’t him entombing a human being inside a tree. Not him pressing his brow reverently to the bark. Not him strolling from the woodland grave, suddenly attuned to all the hopelessness rising from the village like steam from an open wound.


	2. 🙞Graves🙜

There are more like the old man. People lost in the forest searching for food or shelter or both who can no longer move for frostbite or the fatigue of starvation. Despondent adults. Bewildered grandparents. Children. Emaciated bodies huddled under snowdrifts, frost sealing their eyelashes, skin bruised blue and purple and cold-blistered red. Usually, by the time Wirt encounters them, they are dead. The Edelwood only needs the barest coaxing and the quietest tenor notes to stretch its way to the milk-white sky. 

Other times, the victims are still tenuously clinging to life. When they see the smolder of The Beast’s eyes hunting them in the shadows, they stop shuddering or weeping softly to themselves to cry out as if he trapped them there personally. A few beg for mercy from lips so chapped they bleed. Some beg for him to end them quickly. All are stunned to discover that the monster has the face of a young boy… they’d always thought that The Beast was cloaked in darkness, you see. Whether that trace of humanity is comforting or revolting is anyone’s guess. 

Wirt doesn’t really hear their pleading—or their futile cursing upon realizing that death has come for them at long last. He’s smothered the part of himself that feels things. That makes it easier to conclude the morbid fate that these souls are doomed to. It’s not as if he can save them. No matter how many people he brings food to, no matter how much firewood he stacks, there will always be those he can’t reach. The sheer volume of desperation shrieking at him is unbearable. 

One night, almost two months since Enoch lied about Wirt having a choice, he happens upon an Edelwood nearly fully grown. Wirt knows what’s within the tree’s center without seeing. It’s the body of a mother hugging her infant close that brings the blackness of mourning over his frame and transforms him into that gruesome silhouette spoken of in stories. 

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Rumors travel even faster than snowstorms. 

The Beast was sighted near Red Haven, but his eyes were blinding sapphires rather than rainbow rings.

The Beast was singing north of New Falmouth, but he sang a pure tenor—not the booming bass heard for generations and generations. 

The Beast is shorter than before. He doesn’t carry the Dark Lantern with him. He has antlers and a human face.

No—The Beast is a walking void. His eyes aren’t blue. If his claws touch you, you’ll become an Edelwood before you can scream.

Wirt hears all these stories and more as he circles town after town like a buzzard, tempted by the suffering this winter has inflicted upon the Unknown’s citizens and marking more graves with his oil-rich trees. He no longer wastes breath speaking to those he takes; he only peels out the ballad which is imprinted inside him, an echo of the creature he replaced, often with new lyrics that come to him in the criss-cross of snowflakes tossed from the clouds or the whistle of wind through his forest. There is no victory in his melody. It is a lovely lament, a lullaby for the deceased.

He croons to three little girls laying side by side against a hollow log: sisters, given the matching color of their hair and their identical turned-up noses. They look as if they fell peacefully asleep, bundled up in alabaster, tucked in by roots. Paw prints from scavengers riddle the area around them—but after Wirt enters every starved predator flees for its life. Animals know better than to fight the Lord of the Forest for prey. 

Wirt takes a rest against the grand Edelwood that rises from the triple-grave. He folds his talons in his lap and leans his spine against the trunk, silently soothing the sadness that lingers within the bark. _There, there,_ The Beast sends to the lusterless hearts inside. _Sleep. There is nothing to regret…_

He stays with them through the evening. At dawn, Wirt stirs, numb, and begins his journey to the next destination, hiking up higher ground to leave the Edelwood below.

He does not heed the wild baying of hounds closing in. The most he does is blink slowly at the drooling, barking curs as they circle around him, jostling one another in their disjointed attempts to both box him in and keep their distance.

“Up ahead! The dogs found something!”

Wirt should probably run. He doesn’t. Above, clouds skim across the bloodless sky and gather into a hazy mass.

“Hurry—we’re close, we’re close—!”

The thump of boots and harsh shouts of men punch through the morning’s quiet. Wirt ignores the hounds howling and snapping at him and turns to glare toward the Edelwood he just left, furious that these uncaring peasants would disrespect that resting place with their noise.

The ambient light of the woods deepens to the color of smoke. Shadows condense around Wirt and the dogs all leap back from him, cowering. The centers of his eyes flare rage-white when a screech breaks the atmosphere.

“_We’re too late!_”

One man’s anguished shriek pierces Wirt’s ears. He glides stealthily toward the noisy irritating blasphemous group with coattails of shade and the sulking dogs slinking uneasily after him. 

A stranger has thrown himself at the roots of the great Edelwood, inconsolable. The rest of the search party shuffles in place, trying to allay their comrade’s grief with platitudes that grate further on Wirt’s nerves. “We don’t know that it’s your girls.” Failures at consolation. “Patience, Zacharias. We can keep looking. They can’t have gone much farther…”

How are the souls of the children supposed to slumber through this discord?

“Q̡͑ǘ͈i̋ͅĕ̦ẗ̬́.”

A subtle Eldritch timbre thorns Wirt’s voice. He glowers across from the abruptly petrified band of villagers and it is obvious how the light dims to a foggy pall where he stands: a pitch-black statue with a twisted crown. Hounds crawl back to their masters from either side him, whining piteously. 

Only the man splayed on the Edelwood reacts. He’s mad with loss and raves at Wirt like one of the dogs. “Did you do this, Beast? Did you take my daughters?”

Scorching eyes narrow. The man ignores the mutterings of “easy, Zacharias, _easy_” and pushes himself upright, the cords straining in his neck. Spittle flies from his mouth.

“THEY DIDN’T DESERVE THIS,” he bellows. “THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO COME HOME, HEAR ME? GIVE THEM BACK. GIVE ME BACK MY—”

The forest rumbles. The earth heaves. The sound of wood splintering—rock scraping rock—soil turning over—hounds yelping and men shouting—ruptures in the clearing as huge, sinister roots rear from the ground and lash onto the impudent stranger and his friends. Wirt imagines crushing their bones. Their despair—their _fear_—is raw and refreshing, he wants to drink his fill, distill the flavor in ebony oil and let it slip down his tongue…

_Wait._ A minute nudge at his consciousness. A trace of guilt marring his perfect triumph. _They’re not dying… they don’t belong to me… I’m not supposed to…_

Wirt’s eyes widen into perfect globes of consternation. What is he _doing?!_

The roots whip back as if burned, giving the ensnared party enough room to pull free—and giving Wirt enough time to turn tail and _run._

The hounds—the very brave or very stupid ones, anyway—pursue him viciously. Wirt outruns them for a while, scared beyond thought, but the reality of what he’s been doing for days, maybe _weeks or longer,_ sinks its teeth into him and he loses his footing with a chest-deep sob and he’s falling, falling to where the snapping teeth of the dogs can’t get him and he can spread his intolerable remorse through the vastness of the Unknown and beyond the cage of his ribs. Back into the trees and water. Back into the dirt and the clouds. Gone.


	3. 🙞Gullible🙜

Wirt siphons himself into a grove of aspens. The concentration required to make himself small enough to fit into one spot, rather than flayed throughout the entirety of his kingdom, forces darker obsessions from his consciousness. He cannot feel the savagery of his forerunner within the interlocking root system of the pale-barked trees, waiting to overthrow him; in fact, Wirt believes that his showdown with the original Beast might have been a graphic nightmare—horrifying, but not real. 

If there were ever a time for that bastard’s ghost to prey on Wirt’s weakness, it is now. Wirt is sick to death of death. 

Alas, only the comforting presence of the aspens—or rather, _aspen,_ as this mighty grove is truly a single individual sprouting clones throughout the area—reaches Wirt where he’s buried himself. He’s the slenderness of the dappled trunks. The lace of underground connections. Branches for bones. Maybe he can live out the rest of his eternity like this… contained to his forest, unable to harm anyone. Self-relegated to a passive observer with no role in the suffering that stains the Unknown like spilled animal blood.

Wirt breathes through dormant xylem and phloem. It’s so peaceful here…

Which means, obviously, that it doesn’t last.

A pang—an itch like stitches pulled out too soon, maddening, exigent—plucks Wirt involuntarily from the grove. He trembles and hides his face and scrapes his claws against dry alabaster bark to anchor himself. He knows what this is. It smacks of another sacrifice calling him forward—only this invitation is so powerful as to be considered a _demand,_ and the longer Wirt resists its lure the more he feels as if someone has taken steel wool to his skin.

After chanting “no, no, _no_” into the aspens with absolutely no relief, The Beast snarls and tears himself away. Someone wants his presence? Someone has a gift to show him? Very well—they asked for The Beast, and The Beast they shall get.

Wirt doesn’t even realize that he alternates hiking on foot and weaving bodilessly through the woods. The sacrifice rings for him, a singular maddening note that he just wants to shut up, shut _up,_ and he’s already gathering the wolves to his side, their yellow eyes flashing and tongues lolling as they prepare to do their lord’s bidding. Wirt knows that this sacrifice has been made by witches; it is too irresistible to come from people who don’t know what they’re doing and only ask for The Beast to leave them alone. 

White-gold sunshine contrasts starkly to Wirt’s pitch-black outline when he enters the swatch of evergreens; the blaze of his eyes matches the bars of sunlight arrowing through gaps in the needle-furred branches. Wolves form a protective v-shape behind him: knights to their monarch. All of them glare at a towering, sparse fir tree just yards in front of them. At the sacrifice.

And the sacrifice opens her mouth and _shrieks._

Wirt’s eyes narrow to white-hot slits. His lupine companions flick their ears backward, jowls lifting to expose their fangs, catching the heat of their lord’s barely contained rage. “Did they expect me to kill you myself?” The Beast asks. “Di̙d͔ ͍t̯ḩe̢y̞ ̨t̠h̨i̞n͕k̭ ̜I̢'̣d̤ ̞e̪n̡j̥o̙y̩ ̫t̝h̦a̼t̬?̱”

“_Please,_ please, I don’t want to die,” sobs the girl. She could be twelve or sixteen or several years older than Wirt, but he can’t tell because her face and hair are smeared thickly with sheep’s blood. The same can be said of her heavy winter clothes; gore weighs down her skirts and it looks as if someone took ash and scrawled runes all over her and the surrounding snow. She’s been tied to the trunk with rough rope. Several necklaces of bone clatter around her neck and dangle from the fir’s lower limbs. The girl’s terror and the ominous energy blaring from the shrine have Wirt’s abdomen taut with the instinct to vomit or swallow her whole. 

“W͆h̔ö́ ̌d͝i̊d̈́ ̄t͐h̀i͒s͘ ͌t͛ô ̒y̾o̽u̚?̈́” Wirt erases the distance between them until he could reach out with a talon and stroke the girl’s stricken face. The wolves press in curiously behind him, sniffing at the reek of sheep. 

A vein twitches in the girl’s neck. She shakes uncontrollably. “W-witches. They said th-that… if they left a generous sacrifice… The Beast would end this winter.” Fresh tears river down the brown-red matted on her cheeks. “I know it’s s-selfish but I—”

Her pleas falter. Wirt is sawing at the ropes binding her wrists with his claws. Willing to please The Caretaker, the wolves swiftly start to help, gnawing on the tethers at the girl’s ankles and waist. In fewer than five minutes the would-be martyr is freed.

Wirt sweeps away to give her space. She gapes at his silhouette in shock. “You… you’re letting me go?”

“I don’t accept human sacrifices anymore.” Wirt’s tone has returned to its typical tired, forlorn sigh. “Actually, you know what? I’m over sacrifices in general. People should hunt for their own food if they’re going to kill animals… and they shouldn’t be murdering people at all. The seasons have nothing to do with how much blood you spill for me. Got it?”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.

“_Got it?_”

“Y-yes, Lord Beast.” She wavers as if she’s about to dip into a curtsey but as soon as she touches her blood-soaked skirts she winces and wrenches back upright. “W-what… what _is_ your price, then?”

The rumbling wolves echo Wirt’s irritation. “For what? Sparing your life?” The girl nods timidly and the steady lupine growling drops an octave. “There isn’t one. Share the news about no more sacrifices or something, I don’t know. Go home. Stay out of the forest.” _Three little girls. A mother and infant. One old man._ “It’s dangerous out here.”

Wirt and his companions wait for the girl to walk away. She edges to the opposite side of the pines and then stops, still quaking, still teary-eyed and afraid. Wirt realizes with a sick twinge that she believes he’s only letting her go for the pleasure of hunting her down. She thinks he’s going to set the wolves on her as soon as she turns her back. 

Wirt closes his whitefire eyes and counts backward from ten. With a thought he sends the inquisitive pack away; as their sleek shapes thread back to their territory he trods slowly, carefully to the girl. “Come on. I’ll walk you home and protect you from those witches that tied you up. That’s what you’re worried about, right?”

She grasps frantically at the excuse. “Yes. The witches. They’ll be furious if they think I’ve escaped.” An audible gulp slides down her throat. “Would you… um… would you hold my hand?”

Under his cover of shadows, Wirt blushes scarlet. “I’m _sorry?_”

There’s a nervous wildness to her eyes. She holds out her grimy palm, quivering, not at all looking like she wants to touch Wirt. “Please, Lord Beast. Let me thank you for allowing me to live.”

Wirt begins stammering (“No, it’s fine, don’t worry”) but the girl continues to wait beseechingly. It appears as if she’ll stand there all day in her filthy outfit unless Wirt mans up and assents to… holding her hand.

He marches over stiffly, glancing from her offered hand to her hard-to-read expression like a skittish animal. “F-fine,” he mutters, embarrassed. “If this will make you feel safer.”

His talons uncurl. His palm meets hers and his long, long fingers close, lightly enough that the girl can pull away without any effort. 

Her breath hitches. “You’re not the same, Lord Beast,” she whispers.

Before Wirt can ask her what she means, something strikes through him like a shard of lightning—a bolt of raw power that enters through his scalp and shoots through the bare soles of his feet into the earth. He grunts and rips his hand away from her. His ears ring. “W̩h͉a̳t͇ ̼w̮a̖ș ̭ṯh̻a̯t̮?!” 

The girl cringes from him, shielding herself, expecting to be hit, but Wirt is confused and anxious, not angry, shaking his head to clear the horrible whining pitch from his eardrums. There’s a jangling alarm rising within the pines and he can’t pin down where it’s coming from and as he claps his claws over his ears it grates _worse._

“I didn’t think you’d be like this,” the girl rasps. She’s backing away from him. “I thought I was going to die.” 

Wirt attempts to speak, ask her what is going on, but the alarm screams _fortissimo_ and his vision blurs. The girl disappears into the pines. 

Ten men take her place.

_Not again,_ Wirt despairs. He reaches for the safety of the forest—

He doesn’t sink. He can’t move. He’s still trapped in his own body, debilitated by the awful, awful, earsplitting cacophony. Why can’t he escape? What had happened when he’d touched the girl, why were these men surrounding him, what’s going on what did he do wrong—

The first arrow pierces his back, just below the inferior angle of his left scapula. The second spears him in the middle of his stomach, just under his ribs. Wirt adds his unholy scream to the dissonance. It menaces the hunting party, makes them hesitate, but he catches the stretch of another arrow notched on a bow and Wirt forces himself to get up and _run_—

Arrows whistle by him. Slam into trees. Several more thwack into his spine, his shoulders, blinding bone-deep pain exploding each time they hit—

The men are fast, but Wirt is faster, he flies over the terrain like a stag even though he can’t vanish _into_ it for some reason. Ahead he senses a break in the unbearable atmospheric screeching. If he can make it, he’s home free. And he’ll never, ever, _ever_ approach another sacrificial site again, no matter how much it claws for his attention.

He’s almost there. Arrowheads knife into his lungs but he’s almost there, he can’t be hurt in the embrace of the woods— 

_Agony_ splits his right lower limb from the rest of his body. He trips forward, rolls, is snapped short by the _pain anguish torture_ sawing into his ankle, fracturing tibia and fibula, severing calf muscles, opening arteries and veins, hijacking his nerves to send a single incandescent signal of _HURT HURT HURT_ that incinerates Wirt’s brain. His jaw unhinges and he screams for everything he has. He flattens the forest with his torment. Blacks out the sun. Drops the temperature below freezing, cold enough to make breath turn to frost when his assailants inhale, to make their hands freeze solid on their bows. Everything below that horrific point on his limb feels liquified; Wirt is bleeding out.

In the preternatural darkness, Wirt swivels his wide harrowed stare to the steel trap locked around his ankle. 

Resentment hooks itself in his innards, a rusty scythe that makes him gnash his teeth and fist his murderous claws. That smirking cat had been lying through his teeth—Wirt does _not_ have a choice. He is shackled to his nature, and his nature is shackled to the Lantern, and to struggle against the laws that chain him is as futile as trying to escape from the serrated metal mutilating his leg. Wirt may thrash and deny and beg until his heart fails. It won’t brighten the flame of his soul. And it won’t free him from the obligation—no, the _demand_ for him to succumb. To feel the last vestiges of himself die so that The Beast can reign once more. 

Wirt fills his lungs, ignoring the twist of the arrow lodged in his diaphragm. His feral roar shakes the sky and reverberates through the creaking carnivorous bursts of Edelwood that seek out those who harmed him and _crush—their—breakable—bodies—to—death._

Ten archers who tried to take him down. Ten new Edelwood, misshapen and poorly formed, trapped in place. Just like Wirt. 

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The Beast blacks out. In the dead of night, the alarm that disoriented him to the brink of insanity is silenced. He retches instead of breathing… feels the arrows pierced through him… huddles in the ink-washed snow, curling into a shuddering fetal position. To his astonishment, he can pull both legs to his chest without resistance. 

The bear trap has been wrenched open by Edelwood roots, springing up from Wirt’s spilled blood. He skims a claw down his injured calf, not brave enough to see the wound for himself…

The bark of his fingertips meets bark where skin should be. Static hazes his vision. A lightness tackles him, the threat of fainting again. He palpates the grooves that trace around his ankle joint… down his foot.

_No. That’s not what feet are shaped like._

His eyes pour yellow light over the newly sculpted anatomy of his lower limbs. Tarsals have fused into cloven toes, sharp and spade-shaped, with smaller dewclaws sticking just behind—demonic wooden replicas of reindeer hooves. _Not human,_ panics Wirt. He reels. Dissociates. Lurches to all fours, totters upright, starts walking, unsteady as a fawn and wanting only to get as far away from the pines and the bear trap and the Edelwood as he possibly can. The lamplight of his irises cycle through a chaotic array of color although his face is blank. 

_Not human,_ the Unknown agrees, resounding in his chest. 

_Beast._

**Author's Note:**

> And YOU become and Edelwood - and YOU become and Edelwood - EVERYONE BECOMES AN EDELWOOD!!!!!
> 
> You know how in Beast Wirt fictions he usually tries very, very hard not to turn people into trees? Took that choice away from him in this one. I'd apologize for the probably overboard grimdark turn we've taken here, but I'm not sorry about it. All of this suffering will be important!
> 
> Bonus Tracks: "Same" by Snow Patrol, "The Scientist" by Coldplay, and "Noctambulist" by Matryoshka
> 
> Thank you Whiggity for sharing "Noctambulist" with me. I thought it fit really well. If peeps have more music suggestions, don't be shy to send them my way! The next time we see Wirt we'll return to the present with Beatrice and the others (promise, promise, promise).


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